May 22, 2005
Today's must-read is Keith Thompson's "Leaving The Left," a lengthy op-ed in the Sunday SF Chronicle. Read the whole thing, every last word; it's powerful stuff. Thompson is a Petaluma writer and book author, a long-time, though now former, "progressive," who once served as an aide to U.S. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio. Here are some excerpts:
My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.
...A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.
When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport. My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.
...Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.
Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.
...At the heart of authentic liberalism lies the recognition, in the words of John Gardner, "that the ever renewing society will be a free society (whose] capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up."
...This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.
....Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.
All of which is why I have come to believe...that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built.
Good morning San Francisco!
Related Rosenblog posts:
"Freedom, Baby: Taste It."
"Deeds, Not Words."
"The Ghost Of Lieutenant Son."
"Virgin Nails It."
"Pro-Democracy Emigres Raise Their Profile."
"Freedom: You Can Just Taste It."
"U.S. Deaths In Iraq: A Historical Perspective," (by James J. Na).
"Baroud: Arab World Must Shape Up."
"Iraqi, Pissed and Determined."
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 22, 2005 11:53 AM
Win some, lose some. A couple of days before I read this eloquent statement from Keith Thompson on your blog I came across an op-ed by Paul Craig Roberts, no less, posted on David Goldstein's blog. The Roberts piece is a near-hysterical screed calling for the impeachment of Bush on the grounds that our invasion of Iraq is "the crime of the century."
If nothing else, the war against Islamic extremism has produced some remarkable political alliances. I never would have expected to look forward to the writing of an old war horse of the left like Christopher Hitchens, while deploring the latest utterance from Paul Craig Roberts.
Civilization may be gaining the stronger voices in these switches, but some are depressing nonetheless.